ORION THE HUNTER
Orion is one of the most famous of all constellations and is prominent in the winter sky. It consists of several bright stars including giants Rigel and Betelgeuse. Also, a triplet of stars forming his belt and below that, his sword. It is here where the famous Orion Nebula, or M42, is located. It is a large gaseous region where new stars are being born and located about 2,344 light years away. It is just a blur to the naked eye but looking through even a small telescope exposes its colorful nebulosity. But still, it takes several seconds to several minutes of camera exposure to really capture the beautiful colors associated with it. It was my desire to capture this feature on my first telescope, a Celestron Nexstar SE6 then later with my new Celestron 11 inch EdgeHD with computerized equatorial tracking mount

FIRST VIEW
My first view of the Orion Nebula using my Nexstar SE6 telescope on November 28, 2014 with a 30 second exposure

My Celestron SE6 Telescope

... THE FINAL IMAGE ...

With my new 11 inch Celestron EdgeHD telescope, this image was made December 22, 2017 using 15 of the best 30 second images then stacking them in Photoshop CC to yield a 3 and a half minute exposed picture.

Camera used was Canon T2i at ISO setting of 1600 and connecting the camera to my laptop computer via "Backyard EOS" software. For guiding, I used Orion telescope's Starshoot autoguider with scope both connected to the equatorial mount and to the laptop using PHD2 guiding software.

The selection of exposures in Photoshop's LightRoom used for stacking the final image